This paper optimizes functions of probability measures using particle gradient descent for displacement convex functions.
problem Optimizing functions of probability measures with displacement convex properties.
method Particle gradient descent applied to displacement convex functions with theoretical guarantees.
result Finite number of particles and computations are sufficient to find optimal solutions for displacement convex functions.
In this note, we observe the behavior of gradient flow and discrete and noisy gradient descent in some simple settings. It is commonly noted that addition of noise to gradient descent can affect the trajectory of gradient descent. Here, we run some computer experiments for gradient descent on some simple functions, and…
SGD and stochastic gradient descent converge at optimal rates for certain non-convex functions.
problem Optimal convergence rates for non-convex functions under gradient noise.
method Geometric interpretation of the PL-condition to analyze convergence rates.
result Convergence rates of SGD and stochastic gradient descent match those of strongly convex quadratics.
Gradient descent learns ReLU functions with non-zero bias efficiently.
problem Learning ReLU functions with non-zero bias under Gaussian distributions.
method Gradient descent starting from random initialization.
result Gradient descent achieves near-optimal error with high probability.
We study the problem of training deep neural networks with Rectified Linear Unit (ReLU) activation function using gradient descent and stochastic gradient descent. In particular, we study the binary classification problem and show that for a broad family of loss functions, with proper random weight initialization, both…
A new method improves stochastic gradient descent for faster and more efficient estimation.
problem Efficient and fast parametric estimation methods.
method Projected stochastic gradient descent corrected by Fisher scoring.
result The method is faster and more efficient than traditional methods.
Gradient descent can take exponentially long to escape saddle points in 2D.
problem Worst-case inefficiency of gradient descent in non-convex optimization.
method Analysis of gradient descent's performance on 2D functions.
result Gradient descent can take exponentially long to escape saddle points.
Stochastic gradient descent is a simple approach to find the local minima of a cost function whose evaluations are corrupted by noise. In this paper, we develop a procedure extending stochastic gradient descent algorithms to the case where the function is defined on a Riemannian manifold. We prove that, as in the Eucli…
Gradient descent struggles with high-dimensional data fitting.
problem Gradient descent struggles with high-dimensional data fitting.
method Gradient descent training of a two-layer neural network on empirical or population risk.
result Gradient descent training may not decrease population risk faster than t−4/(d−2) under mean field scaling. CBO interprets as SGD, leading to global convergence for nonconvex functions.
problem Understanding and improving gradient-based learning algorithms.
method Interpreting CBO as a stochastic relaxation of SGD.
result CBO provably converges globally to minimizers for nonsmooth nonconvex functions.
Gradient descent biases towards stable rank networks for nearly-orthogonal data.
problem Understanding implicit bias in non-smooth neural networks trained by gradient descent.
method Analysis of two-layer ReLU and leaky ReLU networks trained by gradient descent on nearly-orthogonal data.
result Gradient descent biases towards networks with stable rank and uniform margin for nearly-orthogonal data.
Stochastic gradient descent's long-term fluctuations are described by a diffusion limit.
problem Long-term behavior of stochastic gradient descent in non-smooth settings.
method Functional central limit theorem applied to rescaled trajectory of SGD.
result Characterization of long-term fluctuations around the minimizer.
We provide tight finite-time convergence bounds for gradient descent and stochastic gradient descent on quadratic functions, when the gradients are delayed and reflect iterates from τ rounds ago. First, we show that without stochastic noise, delays strongly affect the attainable optimization error: In fact, the error…
Polyak step size GD reaches final radius of convergence after log iterations.
problem Statistical and computational complexities of Polyak step size GD.
method Generalized smoothness and Lojasiewicz conditions, stability of gradients.
result Polyak step size GD reaches final statistical radius of convergence after logarithmic number of iterations.
New adaptive step-size method for convex optimization without tuning.
problem Optimizing convex functions efficiently with stochastic gradients.
method Adapted Adaptive Gradient Descent Without Descent to stochastic setting.
result Stochastic gradient descent converges under various assumptions.
Gradient descent is a simple and widely used optimization method for machine learning. For homogeneous linear classifiers applied to separable data, gradient descent has been shown to converge to the maximal margin (or equivalently, the minimal norm) solution for various smooth loss functions. The previous theory does …
Piecewise polynomial interpolation-based gradient descent reduces oracle complexity for smooth loss functions.
problem Optimizing empirical risk minimization loss functions
method Piecewise polynomial interpolation-based gradient descent
result Oracle complexity is reduced for smooth loss functions
Gradient descent on MMD GAN parameter space converges globally to target distribution.
problem Convergence of gradient descent in Maximum Mean Discrepancy (MMD) GANs.
method Proposes a parametric kernelized gradient flow that mimics the min-max game in gradient regularized MMD GAN.
result Gradient descent on the generator's parameter space in gradient regularized MMD GAN is globally convergent to the target distribution under certain conditions.
New loss function helps learn unstable dynamical systems.
problem Gradient descent fails to learn unstable dynamical systems.
method Introduced a time-weighted logarithmic loss function.
result Time-weighted loss function effectively learns unstable systems.
Unified framework for analyzing neural networks trained by gradient descent.
problem Lack of generalizable guarantees for neural networks trained by gradient descent.
method Proxy convexity and proxy Polyak-Lojasiewicz inequalities.
result Unified guarantees for neural networks trained by gradient descent.
Gradient descent training of neural networks leads to solutions close to natural cubic splines.
problem Understanding the implicit bias of gradient descent in neural networks.
method Analysis of gradient descent training for wide neural networks, focusing on the curvature penalty and initialization schemes.
result The solutions of gradient descent training are polyharmonic splines for certain initialization schemes.
In this work we propose Hebbian-descent as a biologically plausible learning rule for hetero-associative as well as auto-associative learning in single layer artificial neural networks. It can be used as a replacement for gradient descent as well as Hebbian learning, in particular in online learning, as it inherits the…
Study on privacy leakage in noisy gradient descent algorithms.
problem Information leakage of iterative randomized learning algorithms about training data.
method Analyzes the dynamics of Rényi differential privacy loss in noisy gradient descent algorithms.
result Privacy loss converges exponentially fast for smooth and strongly convex loss functions.
New learning algorithm for real analytic functions without gradient descent.
problem Learning real analytic functions without gradient descent.
method Taylor approximation and sampling data distribution.
result Nonuniform learning result for real analytic functions.
Consider the problem of minimizing functions that are Lipschitz and strongly convex, but not necessarily differentiable. We prove that after T steps of stochastic gradient descent, the error of the final iterate is O(log(T)/T) with high probability. We also construct a function from this class for which the error …
This paper explores a new framework for reinforcement learning based on online convex optimization, in particular mirror descent and related algorithms. Mirror descent can be viewed as an enhanced gradient method, particularly suited to minimization of convex functions in highdimensional spaces. Unlike traditional grad…
Random Function Descent improves optimization in high dimensions.
problem Lack of effective optimization methods in high-dimensional spaces.
method Introducing a 'random function' framework to optimize classical optimization problems.
result Random Function Descent (RFD) is a scalable optimization method that bridges Bayesian and classical optimization.
Generalizes NTK for surrogate gradient learning in neural networks.
problem Lack of theoretical foundation for surrogate gradient learning.
method Generalizes neural tangent kernel (NTK) for surrogate gradient learning (SGL).
result Surrogate gradient NTK provides a good characterization of SGL.
Gradient descent slows significantly in over-parameterized single neuron learning.
problem Learning a single neuron with over-parameterization and square loss.
method Analysis of gradient descent dynamics, proving convergence rates and lower bounds.
result Over-parameterization can exponentially slow down the convergence rate of gradient descent.
Direct proof shows adaptive gradient descent converges near-linearly for convex functions.
problem Proving near-linear convergence of adaptive gradient descent for convex functions.
method Direct Lyapunov-based argument for convex functions with unique minimizer.
result Direct proof of near-linear convergence for convex functions.
Gradient descent trains shallow neural networks to approximate functions in 1D.
problem Approximating functions in 1D with shallow neural networks trained by gradient descent.
method Gradient descent optimization of non-convex weight space for finite width networks in 1D.
result Gradient descent can approximate functions in 1D with a minimal number of weights, balancing practical performance and theoretical capabilities.
Stochastic gradient methods converge for training wide PINNs.
problem Convergence of stochastic gradient descent in training over-parameterized PINNs.
method Established linear convergence of stochastic gradient descent/flow in training over-parameterized two-layer PINNs.
result Linear convergence with high probability for general activation functions.
We prove the local convergence to minima and estimates on the rate of convergence for the stochastic gradient descent method in the case of not necessarily globally convex nor contracting objective functions. In particular, the results are applicable to simple objective functions arising in machine learning.
We provide the first convergence analysis of local gradient descent for minimizing the average of smooth and convex but otherwise arbitrary functions. Problems of this form and local gradient descent as a solution method are of importance in federated learning, where each function is based on private data stored by a u…
HF-opt uses Hamiltonian dynamics to optimize functions, achieving accelerated rates with randomized integration time.
problem Optimizing functions efficiently and accelerating convergence rates.
method Randomized Hamiltonian flow (RHF) with accelerated convergence rates.
result RHGD achieves accelerated convergence rates similar to Nesterov's AGD.
Adapting functional gradients improves FGD's practicality and theoretical guarantees.
problem Implementing FGD in practice due to infinite-dimensional functional gradients.
method Adapting the representation of functional gradients.
result Establishes convergence to a stationary point for smooth losses and a global minimizer under smoothness + Polyak-Lojasiewicz condition.
Explains gradient descent methods and their convergence, focusing on simple analysis.
problem Understanding and analyzing gradient descent methods and their variants.
method Elementary mathematical analysis focusing on structures and assumptions of objective functions.
result Unified convergence analysis of various gradient descent methods and variants.
This paper proves AdaGrad and Adam converge linearly under PL inequality.
problem Understanding the convergence of adaptive gradient methods.
method Unified approach proving AdaGrad and Adam converge linearly under PL inequality.
result AdaGrad and Adam converge linearly when the cost function is smooth and satisfies PL inequality.
SGD converges to global minimum for certain non-convex functions.
problem Theoretical challenges in optimizing non-convex functions in machine learning.
method Perturbed SGD on a broad class of non-convex functions.
result SGD converges to global minimum for certain non-convex functions.
A new method computes gradients without backpropagation.
problem Optimization of machine learning models.
method Forward mode automatic differentiation to compute gradients.
result Forward gradient is an unbiased estimate of the gradient, eliminating the need for backpropagation.
Gradient descent finds halfspaces with low error for agnostic learning.
problem Agnostic learning of linear halfspaces with convex surrogates.
method Gradient descent on convex surrogates for zero-one loss.
result Gradient descent finds halfspaces with error O(OPT1/2+ε) in poly time and sample complexity. Gradient descent dynamics in nonconvex models explained with universality.
problem Understanding long-time behavior of nonconvex gradient descent.
method Developed a state evolution system for tracking gradient descent iterates.
result Gradient descent iterates are approximately independent of data and strongly incoherent with feature vectors.
We learn recurrent neural network optimizers trained on simple synthetic functions by gradient descent. We show that these learned optimizers exhibit a remarkable degree of transfer in that they can be used to efficiently optimize a broad range of derivative-free black-box functions, including Gaussian process bandits,…
The choice of activation function can significantly influence the performance of neural networks. The lack of guiding principles for the selection of activation function is lamentable. We try to address this issue by introducing our variational neural networks, where the activation function is represented as a linear c…
Gradient descent amplifies random features in neural networks to useful ones.
problem Generalization in neural networks trained on corrupted data.
method Characterization of feature-learning process in two-layer ReLU networks trained by gradient descent.
result Gradient descent amplifies random features to useful ones, achieving near optimal generalization error.
Gradient descent and its variants are widely used in machine learning. However, oracle access of gradient may not be available in many applications, limiting the direct use of gradient descent. This paper proposes a method of estimating gradient to perform gradient descent, that converges to a stationary point for gene…
Study Markov chain gradient descent in Hilbert spaces for quadratic loss.
problem Approximating optimal solutions for quadratic loss functions.
method Developed a Markov chain-based stochastic gradient algorithm in Hilbert spaces.
result Established probabilistic upper bounds on convergence.
Gradient descent with preconditioning finds global optima in overparameterized nonconvex factorization.
problem Finding global optima in nonconvex Burer-Monteiro factorization.
method Preconditioned gradient descent for overparameterized nonconvex function minimization.
result Gradient descent with preconditioning achieves linear convergence in the overparameterized case.